On one notebook I experience erratic kernel panics with the error "no init found". Erratic means: every second or third boot works fine and I do not experience any problems when running the box.

I checked CONCURRENCY in rcS, but that's ok. It also does not depend on a kernel version (backup kernels 2.6.35-7.slh.5 and Debian stock 2.6.32-5 do have the same behaviour), and my other two notebooks do not have that problem.

Remove the "quiet" kernel parameter, which might give some further hints. It's likely not a traditional kernel panic, but really "just" a failure to find the root partition, potential causes would be (in no particular order):
- loose cables to the HDD
- bootloader issues, afaik there isn't anything bad known about grub2 right now
- fs corruption
- kernel issues with your HDD controller
- HDDs taking too long to initialize (rootdelay=5 might help here, but this should never happen)
- some other stuff intervening, messing up timing/ probing

hubi

Post subject: RE: Erratic kernel panics Posted: 12.11.2010, 10:31

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slh, thank you for the checklist.

I fear, it's hardware related. The 2.6.35-7 worked fine when it was his turn (it now has the same behaviour). grub2 works perfectly with the two other notebooks. I remove "quiet" and will have a look.

Reading out S.M.A.R.T. values might also give further hints, but keep in mind that S.M.A.R.T. cannot reliably detect broken harddisks (I've seen disks die with no hints in S.M.A.R.T., and horrible S.M.A.R.T. output from disks that continue to work reliable for several years or even brand new ones).

rootdelay=5 seems to cure the symptoms. I'll watch it for a few days and if it's not occurring again, I'll mark it as solved.

It was really erratic, e.g. three times rebooting after going into the kernel, then a blank black screen, then a nice long kernel panic list, then the "no init found" screen and finally a boot

hubi

It could be that your hard drive now takes a long time to initialize and that could be the cause of your spurious kernel panics. I'd consider the possibility that drive could be on its way out as it's probably pretty tired. If you have another good drive, why not test it?